Freddy at 8 Stacey Court

Tuesday

Aug 6, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 6, 2013 at 6:16 AM

This is part of a series reflecting Dave Crowley’s childhood in Marblehead.

David Crowley / marblehead@wickedlocal.com

We arrived from St. Louis and turned into Stacey Street in Marblehead, just opposite the Old North Church. With Edgar Bartlett’s Garage on the right, we drove straight on between high hedges. A narrow lane on the left led to our B&B at 10 Stacey Court — and to the house at 8 Stacey Court, where my childhood friend Freddy Petersen had lived.

I was delighted to see that the large willow with its spreading limbs and the wide expanse of lawn where Freddy and I played was still there. The yard was fringed with flowers and contained a small fishpond, added sometime during the 64 years since Freddy and I first met in 1948.

He was eight and I was nine. His mother Vivian had brought him and his older brother Herbert to the U.S. from Argentina after learning that her husband was having an affair with a secretary. She was a Christian Scientist and it was her church that helped with U.S. sponsorship and found her part time work as a translator at the “Christian Science Monitor” in Boston.

Freddy spoke with a Spanish accent and would pronounce while as “whilst” and were as “where,” as his British teachers had taught him in Buenos Aires. We played and fished in the harbor and he became my most loyal friend. Unlike other boys who bullied me, Freddy was courteous, kind and well spoken. His English improved rapidly and the Briticisms fell away.

With one foot still in his home country, he filled my mind with the wonders of its magnificent capital: broad avenues, beautiful buildings, theaters, concert halls, and the world’s largest radio studio. Sixty-five years later I still think of Freddy and Buenos Aires every time I hear anything about Argentina.

Herbert, Freddy’s older brother, was a marvelous pianist. I loved listening to him play wonderful pieces by Chopin and other composers. I took lessons myself for a few months but found it too frustrating.

In spring of 1949, an ad for a home permanent-wave kit appeared on TV and in magazines. “Which Twin Has the Toni?” featured two women with luxurious curly hair. One spent hours in a beauty shop and other used Toni’s home kit. So inspired, our mothers outfitted Freddy and I in dresses and curly wigs for Marblehead’s annual Fourth of July Horribles parade. We carried a sign with the “Toni” question in the competition for the most imaginative costume. After expecting a first, we won third prize.

In 1951, Vivian sent Herbert to Mount Herman Academy, and later that year moved to Newton to be close to a full-time job she had found. Apart from a few visits during high school, I never saw Freddy again. My mother kept up with Vivian for four decades and relayed news to me: They acquired a sandwich business; she and Herbert fought but she got along well with Freddy; Herbert married and divorced then moved to Florida where his deaf daughter was murdered at age 26. There was no mention of Mount Herman or the piano.

I lost track of Freddy after my mother died in 2000, and worried that he had died. In early 2012, one of the bullies who harassed me when we were kids told me that Freddy had punched him in retaliation for an attack on me a day or two earlier all those years ago. I had never known I had a defender.

In August 2012, I found Freddy in Florida through an Internet search. He was successful in construction and real estate and was still working at age 73. Herbert had died in late 2009. “Yeah, I defended you against other kids, too,” he said when I thanked him for sticking up for me. “I had a wonderful childhood,” he added, “but the hardest part was leaving Marblehead when I was 12.”

This is part of a series reflecting Dave Crowley’s childhood in Marblehead. Crowley left the seaside town in 1969 for St. Louis, Mo. He can be reached at crowleyd102@yahoo.com.